
Class_aXk33^ 
Book. . U fe ^S ^^ 
Copyriglrtlsi" 



COPVRIGHT DEPOSIT; 




JAMES PHILIP EAGLE, 



SPIRITUAL 


FARMING 


By J. F. LO V E 




WITH 


AN INTRODUCTION 


BY 

JAMES P. i;;A,G,LE^ \ ^:} ' 


Sunday School Board 

Southern Baptist Convention 

Nashville, Tenn. 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 
APR 25 1904 
Copyright Entry 

CLASS OUXXc. No. 



COPY B 



S 



BXt33a 

^ b 4* S b 



DEDICATION. 



To that ancient order, The Honorable 
Knights of the Plow-handle and the Hoe-han- 
dle, who, more than any other class of Ameri- 
can citizens, by their intrepidity, subdued this 
continent; by their patriotism established our 
liberties; by their industry now furnish the 
nation its staflf of life; and whose future task 
it is to exemplify purity in religion, simplicity 
in worship, and continue to be a plant-bed 
from'^^bicH tbe,pu}pit, jhe college, and the pro- 
fes^iod^ ^4y**Jl^^W tHeir sftppli^', this little 
volume is, with a thousand* Vrateful memories 
of;thpia^rn^arid;ijt^/h^rd but.npble toil, dedi- 
cated* by*' •* ** " >* .* '.** ••** Tjiji: Author. 



Copyrighted, 1903, by J. F. Love. 



PREFACE. 

The following pages are the written forms 
of spoken discourses delivered to my church 
and congregation in Wadesboro, North Caro- 
lina, while I was their happy pastor. In pub- 
lishing these talks I do not yield to anybody's 
request for their publication; but I do act on 
the suggestion of friends, and with the hope 
that these pages may prove to be fruitful seed 
from which, in time to come, a spiritual har- 
vest may be gathered. We are grateful for 
having what we have written introduced by 
our brother, Ex-Governor Eagle, whose vo- 
cation is that of an eminently successful 
farmer, and whose irreproachable Christian 
character and ripe Christian experience exem- 
plify the best products of spiritual agricul- 
ture. James F. Love. 

Little Rock, Ark., March lo, 1904. 



INTRODUCTION 



The Old and the Xew Testament Scriptures 
abound with illustrations drawn from the va- 
rious agricultural pursuits which most beau- 
tifully and forcefully set forth Christianity and 
its growth. The Savior himself drew many 
of His most striking parables from the every- 
day experiences of the tillers of the soil. It 
is remarkable how sparingly the preachers of 
the present day use these very apt illustrations 
of great truths and fundamental principles in 
their sermons and their articles published in 
our religious papers. It is still more remark- 
able when we call to mind that the majority of 
our ministers were reared in the countrv on 
the farm, and are experimentally acquainted 
with every phase of farming, from clearing 
and fencing the land to harv^esting the crop. 
A very large and influential portion of the 
Lord's people are farmers w^ho w^ould, no 
doubt, derive both pleasure and profit from 
hearing sermons and readings articles in the 
papers which present Bible truths in figures 
with which they are familiar. They are Bi- 



spiritual Farming 5 

ble readers; and many of them read our de- 
nominational papers. 

The author of this Uttle book has, in a clear 
and pleasing style, presented a number of 
these figures and has emphasized the truths 
they are intended to teach. 

The thoughtful Christian reader, whether 
agriculturist or not, will, by following the au- 
thor of these pages and meditating on the 
truths he teaches, be greatly helped and 
strengthened in Christian faith and work, and 
lead, on to greater heights of Christian use- 
fulness and joy. 

James P. Eagle. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Part I. — Breaking the Land. 9 

Part IL — Sowing the Seed 25 

Part IIL — Cultivating the Crop 39 

Part IV. — Reaping the Harvest 57 



''Break up your fallow grounds, and sow 
not among thorns/' The Bible. 

'The works of God are the shepherd's cal- 
endar and the plowman's almanac." Anon. 

"What battles the plowboys have fought in 
dreams ! What orations they have pro- 
nounced! What reforms achieved! What 
tools invented! What books written! What 
business reared/' Hillis. 



SPIRITUAL FARMING 



Part I. — Breaking the Land. 

How full of spiritual suggestion are the 
fields ! Nowhere do men live closer to the 
heart of things than in plantation life, and 
to no one more than to the discerning farmer 
does day unto day utter speech and night 
unto night show knowledge. Spring-time and 
autumn preach so plainly of God's wisdom 
and of the soul's seasons c^nd opportunities! 
These sons of toil who rise early and walk 
abroad over ample acres see 

"Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, 
Sermons in stones and good in everything " 

if they carry with them spiritual vision and a 
devout soul. 

The preachers of righteousness who speak 
to us in the Word glean many of their illus- 
trations and similes from the fields. The 
Scriptures abound in figures and types from 
the hills and the meadows. The smell of the 
fresh earth, the odor of the wild flowers, and 
the bracing air of the country pervade the 



lo spiritual Farming 

Book. Religious truth is there taught in the 
famiHar speech of the farmer. Our present 
theme is one of the most suggestive of agri- 
cultural symbols. ''Break up your fallow 
grounds and sow not among thorns.'' 

Fallow ground is land which was once 
broken but has been neglected until it has 
grown over again with weeds, briers, etc. 
Such land is made a type of the moral and 
spiritual condition of Israel. It is also a 
lively figure of certain classes among us to- 
day. Some man was once aroused on the 
subject of religion, but failing to act soon be- 
came cold and indifferent. Some faithful 
man of God declared a message which set truth 
in a new light and made him feel new moral 
sensations. He saw deeper into his heart's 
depravity than ever before. Perhaps he real- 
ized that he was already a victim to some 
enslaving habit. Or he saw Jesus in such 
incomparable loveliness and ineffable sweet- 
ness as never before. But he would not act 
and the vision faded, the blessed emotion sub- 
sided, the soul fell into its old chill of indiffer- 
ence and old and new sins took root and put 
forth their noxious branches. The man of 
God has gone his way and that soul is fallow 
ground. 



spiritual Farming f t 

Another is represented here. He was 
aroused to momentary action in time of re- 
vival, or under providential affliction, he was 
convicted of sin and confessed it; saw Christ 
to be his only hope, and professed his faith in 
Him. He was numbered among the converts. 
Then the doors of the church were opened and 
others, friends and companions, entered her 
sacred communion and gratefully took her 
vows; but he hesitated, postponed obedience, 
fell into temptation, then doubted his conver- 
sion, and finally decided not to join the church. 
He has since had no peace or joy, and now 
knows that he is not fit to participate in Chris- 
tian fellowship. His soul is sodden and the 
precious seeds of truth are ''choked with the 
cares and riches and pleasures of this life and 
bring no fruit to perfection." 

Others have even joined the church, obey- 
ing the primary commands to repent and be 
baptized, but have failed to carry the princi- 
ple of obedience into the whole course of their 
lives and apply it to service and benevolence. 
This class, all too numerous, keep the ordi- 
nances but disobey the subsequent orders of 
Christ. They are sound in doctrine but not 
in doing. These baptized drones remind us 
of the reply made by the little boy who fell 



12 Spiritual Farming 

out of bed in his sleep and hurt himself. His 
father picked him up and asked him how it 
happened. "I went to sleep too near the place 
where I got in," sobbed the little sufferer. 
How many children of the church do this! 
They seem to mistake the church for a spir- 
itual dormitory. "Awake! Awake!'' is a 
call which reverberates through the Holy 
Book, and should be echoed from all of our 
pulpits. 

CLEAR THE LAND. 

This is the first work to be done in fallow 
ground. The farmer would not begin his 
spring time work by planting his corn in the 
hard soil and among the brushes and briers. 
There is much clearing and deep plowing to 
be done before the time comes for planting. 
The natural man and the backslidden believer 
present a moral soil which is both hard and 
grown over with many things hostile to spir- 
itual graces. The land must be prepared or 
the good plants of the kingdom will be choked. 

In some lives a rank growth of pride must 
be cut down. Self-esteem grows tall in the 
unregenerate heart, grows rapidly in an awak- 
ened but unconverted nature, and some of the 
most luxuriant growths are to be found in the 



spiritual Farming 13 

lives of backsliders. No one has yet made 
a catalogue of all the varieties of this exotic 
plant. Some people are too proud of their 
families to become humble and congenial 
Christians. They are the De Stanhopes of 
the society of attenuated pedigrees. Some 
are puffed up with social pride, some are 
purse-proud, with some it is pride of intellect 
• — not intellectual pride. These are sometimes 
called high-minded, but the botanical name for 
this variety of moral vegetation is vacuus 
mentis, which, in the better language of the 
farmer, is empty-pated. To these and all oth- 
ers of a proud heart the Word speaks with 
plainness: "Humble yourselves in the sight 
of the Lord and He will lift you up." Pride 
is a cardinal sin because growing so tall it 
shades the moral nature and renders it barren 
of the lowlier, gentler, and more beautiful 
graces ; besides many plants even fouler than 
itself flourish under its shadow. 

The stumps of evil habit must be dug up. 
Some of the richest soil is where the stoutest 
stumps stand. Evil habits are like stumps 
because they are hard to uproot and because 
other trees of their kind sprout from them. 
Most sins spring from some original stock 
and few sins appear singly. Sin multiplies 



14 Spiritual Farming 

from habit even as many shoots spring from 
the same stump. The destruction of the 
stump is the only effectual remedy. Reforma- 
tion alone fails of complete results because 
reformation only prunes the tree or cuts away 
the sprouts from the stumps of evil habit. 
The old sinful acts will soon appear again. 
The wise tiller of the soil of his moral nature 
will not plant among these stumps of evil 
habit. 

The roots of selfishness must be grubbed 
up. This work is painful in its process but 
absolutely necessary and is of great benefit in 
making farming easy and the harvest large. 
Sometimes the roots of selfishness are set m 
a man's love of money. A little grubbing 
about the pocket-book shocks him painfully. 
A very little ministerial grubbing with a keen- 
edged Scripture text aggravates him sorely. 
Sometimes the roots of selfishness are set in 
self-ease, and a sermon from such a passage 
as "Work out your own salvation/' or ''Why 
stand ye here idle all the day?'' is a palpable 
impertinence and vexes him beyond endur- 
ance. His slothful soul wants to be let alone. 

In other cases the roots of selfishness bur- 
row, not in self-ease, but in self-indulgence. 
Some questionable practice or worldly amuse- 



spiritual Farming 15 

ment is their delight. That which is hurtful to 
Christian influence and offensive to Christian 
people is claimed as a personal privilege. All 
remonstrance and admonition are taken as in- 
terference with individual liberty. But we need 
not to enumerate the roots of selfishness, for 
they are many and some are long, some go 
down deep in the nature, some are tough, and 
some are gnarly. Yet they must all be utterly 
rooted up if we would be fruitful in ourselves. 
Cast out the stones of stumbling. The 
mountain farmer will understand this figure. 
The rocks which he leaves in the field make 
difficult the cultivation of the soil, hinder the 
growth of the corn and bruise the feet of the 
plowman. Many an aching toe has an- 
nounced that the work of ^'clearing up" the 
land was not well done. Many spiritual plan- 
tations are sterile for lack of attention to this 
matter. Many feeble ones are caused to stum- 
ble, some to fall, and others are bruised be- 
cause of the stones of stumbling in the way. 
It may be a pack of cards, the ballroom, the 
theater, the wine-cup, or some other popular 
amusement. It need not be a very great sin 
nor a very ugly one. You may not judge its 
hurtfulness by the harm it does you. These 
things are to be judged mainly by the barren- 



1 6 Spiritual Farming 

ness which they cause in your rehgious life, 
and as stones of stumbling to others. The 
meaning of Paul, speaking by the Holy Ghost, 
is plain : ''That no man put a stumbling block 
or an occasion to fall in his brother's way/' 
The prophet declared a like message: ''Cast 
up, cast up, prepare the way, take up the 
stumbling block out of the way of my people/' 
Personal liberty is no becoming plea for a 
Christian to raise in a matter of mere personal 
pleasure which hurts his influence not only over 
sinners whom he ought to save, but over good 
people and endangers weak ones. "Take heed 
lest by any means this liberty of yours be- 
comes a stumbling block to the weak." Adopt 
this principle, rather: "If meat maketh my 
brother to stumble I will eat no flesh for ever- 
more that I make not my brother to stumble." 
That was Paul's course in a matter in which 
he saw no sin but which was a barrier to the 
conscience of others. "Sinning against the 
brethren, and wounding their conscience when 
it is weak, ye sin against Christ." 

Destroy entangling and irritating briers. 
"Sow not among thorns." There are nettles 
of personal envy, jealousy, stinging nettles of 
impatience and irritability, and sharp thorns 
of hasty, harsh, and savage speech which 



spiritual Farming 17 

pierce gentle hearts and make them 
bleed. The running brier is to the farmer 
the most common and annoying variety. It 
is a fitting type of slanderous tales and tattling 
talk. The running brier grows faster, spreads 
further and is the most harassing pest of fal- 
low ground. Its presence indicates a shallow 
and poor soil. In these respects it is typical 
of uncharitable speech and the character of 
those who use it. From a very small root of 
fact the running brier of tale-bearing can 
cover a whole community, and a very slender 
and harmless looking specimen has often 
tripped innocent people and permanently in- 
jured their reputations. Friend, if one of these 
briers is growing in your field, destroy it or 
it will destroy much good. 

BREAKING THE LAND. 

Land which has been so neglected and be- 
come so infested needs thorough and deep 
plowing. Nothing short of this will break up 
the old roots of evil, prepare it for good seed 
and insure their growth and a good harvest. 
Some farmers have seemed to us to do little 
more than tickle their lands. The subsoil is 
left unturned and hard. There is a danger 



i8 Spiritual Farming 

in this finical age that preachers will do the 
same sort of work. It is for our instruction 
in righteousness that the men who have had 
a fruitful ministry have been deep plowers. 

The gospel plow must go deep enough to 
break up moral and spiritual indifference. 
There is but one thing more appalling than 
the spiritual coma into which multitudes ev- 
erywhere have fallen. No tame means will 
wake them; over-polite, refined and conven- 
tional appeal will soothe rather than arouse. 
There is in all men a divinely implanted reli- 
gious feeling which is to be considered, and 
which may be boldly appealed to. Its reason- 
able excitement betrays no crudeness in the 
method which has been used. Regeneration 
must go down to the very deepest spiritual 
sensations. 

The conscience and the will must be 
reached and stirred up. The source of moral 
fertility must be reached. These do not al- 
ways lie near the surface, but, in fallow 
ground, are likely encrusted and grown over. 
The beaten and sodden soil of religious neg- 
lect and sinful indulgence overlays them. 
The prancing steeds of pleasure and the rov- 
ing herds of sinful indulgence have trodden 
the surface hard. It will take thorough plow- 



spiritual Farming 19 

ing to suitably prepare for seed-sowing and 
insure the harvest. The preacher wiir shock 
some more sensitive souls before he reaches 
the consciences of others. The doctrines of 
judgment and retribution sound harsh and un- 
refined to some while necessary to arouse 
others. Anecdotes, elocution, poetry and cur- 
rent events may please but will not pulverize 
these natures. 

And deeper still — let down the plow until 
secret sins are found out and turned out. 
The farmer is glad to plow out the mice and 
moles before planting his potatoes. There 
are in the lives even of the best men forgotten 
and unconscious sins; there are in some men 
secret sins and hypocrisies which must be ex- 
posed, confessed and abandoned before theji 
can find peace. It was not long ago when 
a boy came to us after we had preached a 
sermon on repentance, which under God had 
plowed a furrow in his heart, and confessed 
that he was guilty of a half-dozen thefts in 
the town, and being told his duty, went and 
paid for the goods he had stolen. A broken 
heart is a condition of salvation, as broken 
land is a condition of a good crop. 

And deeper yet — the motives of religious 
acts and observances must be reached. No 



20 Spiritual Farming 

work, no gift, no speech is of religious worth 
apart from a pure motive to prompt it. Mo- 
tive colors the whole matter. It sullies or 
sanctifies all we do. If the springs of action 
are not pure the most helpful act, the largest 
gift is contaminated. Or, to return to our 
agricultural figure, motive determines the 
[uality of the fruit which our lives produce. 
A yield the most bountiful and beautiful to 
the eye is sour to the Master's taste if it is not 
sweetened with a good motive. 

WHAT IS GAINED BY SUCH PREPARATION. 

New lands are brought under cultivation. 
Sometimes we have neglected to till the most 
fertile land. For years the farmers in one of 
the Eastern States cultivated the high sandy 
land of the pine-belt and made small crops, 
while the swamp lands with their great native 
poplars and gums were untouched by the plow 
and remained the home of the bear and the 
panther. Not many years ago some sensible 
fellow reasoned that land which grew trees 
six feet in diameter would grow corn. He 
made the experiment and never afterwards 
could he be induced to plant an acre of sand- 
hill. The neighbors followed his example, 



spiritual Farming 21 

and now in the lair of wild beasts great har- 
vests grow, fifty and sixty fold more than was 
formerly gathered from the upland. In many 
individual lives there are unreclaimed talents 
and neglected gifts which might be turned into 
great fruitfulness for God and a needy world. 
And there is scarcely a community in which 
there are not men and women who are useless 
for the cause of Christ and whose influence is 
even counted a menace and, yet, who might, 
by reason of position in society, natural gifts, 
personal magnetism, or culture, become the 
most useful men and women in the entire 
community. We have observed that in most 
small towns and villages, as well as country 
neighborhoods, there are single individuals, 
or a small coterie of them, who, should they 
become positively religious, could change the 
moral character of the whole place. And of- 
ten these are the fallow-ground sort charac- 
terized in these remarks. 

Such clearing and breaking of the soil 
makes the work of cultivation easier. What 
toil and hardship a farmer has through all the 
long summer because the land is not cleared 
of all the stumps and rocks and thoroughly 
plowed in the spring! So have individuals 
and so have churches and ministers suffered 



22 Spiritual Farming 

for lack of genuine work in the first stages 
of religious experience and soul culture. A 
complete work with our sins makes easy work 
with our graces. If the minister had made 
no compromises with the sins and pleasures 
of the young inquirer he would have had less 
trouble with the frolics of the young church- 
member. 

Thorough preparation insures a more 
abundant crop. It is a waste of seed to throw 
them out on uncleared and unbroken land. 
The farmer practices no such folly and bad 
economy. He is after a harvest and he counts 
all labor well spent which multiplies that har- 
vest. After all, is not fruitfulness a great 
end for which we spend all our anxious care 
and Christian labor? The motto of a distin- 
guished Puritan was usefulness. This like a 
master-passion dominated his long life. His 
signet ring bore the device of a fruit-bearing 
tree. When he was dying and just as his ears 
were being muffled to human voices forever, 
his son asked him for a word to remember 
when he was gone, and the old man answered 
in a whisper, "Fruitfulness." That is an end 
to live for and a consolation to die with. 



''Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? 
Doth he open and break the clods of his 
ground? When he hath made plain the face 
thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, 
and scatter the cummin, and cast in the prin- 
cipal w^heat and appointed barley and the rye 
in their place?" The Bible, 

''Sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a 
habit and you reap a character; sow a char- 
acter and you reap a destiny; destiny is eter- 
nal/^ Anon, 



spiritual Farming 25 



Part IL — Sowing the Seed. 

Every time the farmer sends a plowman 
into the field he should be reminded of the 
words of his Master, *'Go ye also into the vine- 
yard/' Every time seed are scattered over the 
fresh earth the sower should recall that 
"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap/' Every furrow plowed and every grain 
planted is a symbol at once recognizable and 
impressive of some spiritual fact of paramount 
and personal importance. Among the sym- 
bolical statutes in the rotunda of the Congres- 
sional Library at Washington is one called 
Religion, It is a female figure holding a 
flower in her hand, seeming to teach that re- 
ligious truths are revealed in nature. Again, 
in one of the corridors are several tympanums, 
among which are Labor and Religion. La- 
bor represents two young men at work in the 
field, one removing a stump, the other over- 
turning the soil, preparing to plant the seed. 
Religion, which is significantly next to Labor, 
shows a boy and a girl, they too in the open 
field, bowing before a large rough stone on 
which the glowing altar-fire is burning. The 



26 spiritual Farming 

two pictures, placed together as they are, hint 
at the close relation between labor and reli- 
gion, and that the field and its symbols sug- 
gest religious thoughts and inspire religious 
devotion. 

Our present theme takes us a stage further 
than our last in the process of spiritual farm- 
ing. It observes the natural order. We must 
go beyond clearing and breaking the land. 
We must not only plow but 

PLANT AND SOW. 

'*Doth the plowman plow all day?" or, more 
exactly, is he ''always plowing?" Does he do 
nothing but keep the land in order? Think 
of a man calling himself a farmer who, though 
always busy, never sows a seed or plants a 
grain ! Such a farmer would be considered a 
good deal greener than grass by his neighbors, 
and many a right hearty laugh would they have 
at his ignorance. And yet it is feared that 
there is a large class of men who as spiritual 
farmers never get beyond the clearing stage. 
They are literally cultivators of the soil — they 
sow no seed of good works and cultivate noth- 
ing but the soil. Whenever they work at 
all they are engaged in ''spiritual improve- 



spiritual Farming 27 

ment." Their prayers, devotions, the preach- 
ing day and the annual revival are all looked 
upon as means to this end. Their intermit- 
tent religious exercise is given to "giving up 
what is wrong" and ''getting my heart right." 
They spend the whole summer of their days 
in digging up the stumps and breaking up the 
land. This is a good work and necessary, 
but, alone, it leaves the world starving for 
the bread of life. Nor does their religion 
yield them satisfaction. The fruits of the 
Spirit are ''love, joy, peace," etc., but we must 
sow to the Spirit if we would reap of the 
Spirit. And preparing the soil is not sowing. 
How proud some men are of their nega- 
tive virtues. "I never swore an oath." "I 
have not taken a drink of whisky in five 
years." Now that is simply keeping the land 
cleared. It is not even breaking it up. Is a 
farmer proud of his plantation because it never 
grows grass and weeds? Is he called a, suc- 
cessful farmer who simply keeps his field 
clean? Are you expecting the harvest re- 
wards because you keep defiling sin out of 
your heart? Of course you cannot make a 
good harvest if you do not keep these things 
out, but neither can you make it if you do 
not put the seeds in. It would be a contra- 



28 spiritual Farming 

diction of the commonest law of agriculture 
for us to reap without sowing. ^'Whatsoever 
a man sowefh, that shall he also reap." ''He 
that goeth forth and weepeth bearing pre- 
cious seed shall doubtless come again with re- 
joicing bearing his sheaves with him." If 
we bear no seeds we shall bring no sheaves. 
Otherwise we should contradict both nature 
and experience. The like has not been seen. 
Nature withholds the harvest from the man 
who withholds the seed from her. 

He who would reap a large harvest must 
not only sow, but he must 

sow LIBERALLY. 

*'When he hath made plain the face thereof, 
doth he not cast abroad the fitches and scatter 
the cummin, etc. ? He must not be too stingy 
with his seed, for "He which soweth spar- 
ingly shall reap also sparingly; and he w^hich 
soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifullv." 
The wise spiritual farmer will sow many seed 
and he will "cast abroad and scatter." His 
charity, if it begin at home, will not end there. 
He is the equal friend of his poor neighbor, 
of State Missions, of Home Missions, and of 
Foreign Missions. "The field is the world." 



spiritual Farming 29 

What a gloriously expansive domain is his 
who would plant for a great harvest! All 
hearts and all continents belong to him who 
wants a field in which to sow righteousness. 
"Cast abroad'* wherever you can prepare a 
heart or find one prepared for the incorrupti- 
ble seed. Remember that every man is either 
a subject or an object of gospel evangelism. 
He is either a farmer or a field in this spir- 
itual agriculture. He is saved, and so is be- 
come a savior, or he is a sinner in need of sal- 
vation. Wherever you find a man or can 
reach him through other instrumentality there 
pursue your vocation as a tiller of hearts. 
Make his life a virtue-garden. There is no 
pre-empted territory where you may not of 
right cast the precious seed. "Blessed are 
ye that sow beside all waters." 

Ah, but the scanty sowing we do. If the 
world is our field and we may be growing the 
precious crop wherever we will, why are we 
so reluctant to sow? Some seem afraid that 
every seed that escapes their fingers is wasted. 
Some who trust nature cannot trust God. If 
they cannot keep both eyes on every gift they 
are afraid to sow it lest it should be thrown 
away. "Truly the children of this world are 
in their generation wiser than the children of 



3^ Spiritual Farming 

light." Some in their selfishness even eat the 
seed corn on which they are dependent for a 
future harvest. These are words worthy to 
be our motto: 'T would lean forth and sow 
as far as hand can scatter my seed. Let the 
angels count the bundles." 

"It never was loving that emptied the heart, 
Or giving that emptied the purse." 



sow A VARIETY OF SEEDS. 

''Cast abroad the fitches and scatter the 
cummin and cast in the principal wheat and 
the appointed barley and the rye/' etc. The 
''one crop" system has made a poor man of 
many a farmer. It has likewise impoverished 
many a Christian. Put forth many kinds of 
golden grain, "For thou knowest not whether 
shall prosper either this or that." Take a 
hand in every good cause. 

Sow many prayers. You may not see the 
harvest on the day of your sowing, but this 
ought not in all cases to be expected. You 
may not always sow wath skill and the harvest 
may sometime be long, the crop may even 
sometimes fail through our blunders, but it 
will be a good crop when you make it. Do 



spiritual Farming 31 

net stay in your sowing. "In due time we 
shall reap if we faint not/' 

Sow many kind words. Sometimes we will 
do well if we water them with our tears. 
Spoken with trembling lips and swimming eyes 
sometimes — 

"A whisper on the tumult thrown 

A transitory breath, 
May raise a brother from the dust 

And save a soul from death." 

A bit of well-known history may illustrate 
the wisdom of such sowing and the joy that 
may come from it. In a sermon delivered in 
Tremont Temple, Boston, Dr. George C. Lori- 
mcr used the words, "The bird with a broken 
pmion never soars so high again.'' Hezekiah 
Butterworth, editor of Youth's Companion, 
heard them and forthwith wrote the poem, 
"The Bird with the Broken Wing." A few 
years later Dr. Lorimer went to Chicago as 
pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, and there 
one night while speaking he raised his finger 
and said, "It may be to-night there is a de- 
faulter here." His finger happened, as some 
would say, to be pointed directly towards a 
man guilty of that sin. The man felt his guilt 
and resolved upon restitution. But before this 



32 spiritual Farming 

was done his crime was discovered. He con- 
fessed it and went to Joliet prison for two 
years. While there he one day picked up a 
scrap of paper from the corridor and found 
written upon it Mr. Butterworth's poem. This 
gave direction to that life already wrought 
upon by the spirit of God since the hour the 
minister pointed his finger at him in Immanuel 
Church, He copied the words of the poem 
which drew so pathetic a picture of his own 
maimed life. Released finally from prison, he 
became a faithful and earnest minister and 
used often to recite the poem. These are the 
familiar words: 

"I walked through the woodland meadow, 

Where the sweet rushes sing, 
And found, on a bed of mosses, 

A bird with a broken wing. 

"I healed its wound, and each morning 

It sang its old sweet strain ; 
But the bird with a broken pinion 

Never soared as high again. 

"I found a young life broken 

By sin's seductive art. 
And touched with a Christlike pity, 

I took it to my heart. 



spiritual Farming 33 

"He lived with a noble purpose, 

And struggled not in vain; 
But the life that sin had stricken 

Never soared as high again. 

"But the bird with the broken pinion 

Kept another from the snare, 
And the life that sin had stricken 

Raised another from despair. 

"Each loss has its compensation, 
There is healing from every pain. 

But the bird with the broken pinion 
Never soared as high again." 

Before the fact of that man's salvation and 
his own fruitful ministry, and that poem still 
being repeated around the world, who can tell 
what shall be the harvest from the faithful 
words spoken by Dr. Lorimer? 

Sow deeds of benevolence. Reach forth 
your hand and scatter generous acts of broth- 
erly kindness and human helpfulness. Deeds 
are seeds with all their power of reproduction 
and multiplication. They are also possessed 
with immortality; that immortality by which 
the heart of things lives in resurrected life. 
We sow the seed which shall bear grain. 
When the sower of good deeds rests from his 
labors his works shall follow him. The deed 



34 Spiritual Farming 

may be the gift of a dime or a dollar to some 
worthy cause. It is not lost. Trust it to God 
as you trust the seed to the soil. It will bring 
forth in its season. 

*'So should we live that every hour 

May die as dies the natural flower — 
A self reviving thing of power; 
That every thought and every deed 
May hold within itself the seed 
Of future good and future meed " 

God and nature are great multipliers. You 
can count the trees in the orchard, but you 
cannot count the trees in the apples on the 
trees. Each apple contains seed enough to 
make an orchard and many barrels of blush- 
ing fruit. You may be able to count the 
grains of what you sow, but not the grains 
they shall make. Then, of prayers, words, 
deeds and gifts let us, like wise farmers, sow 
the waiting fields. 

"Sow in the morn thy seed; 

At eve hold not thy hand; 
To doubt and fear give thou no heed ; 

Broadcast it o'er the land. 

Thou canst not toil in vain, 

Cold, heat, and moist and dry 
Shall foster and mature the grain 
For garners in the sky." 



spiritual Farming 35 

STUDY ADAPTATION TO SOIL. 

"Cast in the principal wheat, and the barley, 
and the rye in their place/' The seed must 
be adapted to the soil and the sowing to the 
season. Good seed may fail on some soils ; 
and wheat may be sown in autumn, but cotton 
must be planted in spring. Disregarding the 
suitable place and the appropriate time to sow, 
the farmer may turn all of his labor to naught. 
And therein may the preacher and the Chris- 
tian worker find a lesson. "A word in due 
season how good is it.'' Yea, "A word fitly 
spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of sil- 
ver." Sometimes a little knowledge of Greek 
has greatly facilitated the minister in playing 
the fool. A young theologue can choke a 
whole audience of farmers on botanical terms, 
while the same farmers know enough about 
the plantation and the garden to feed the world 
on bread and keep it beautiful and sweet with 
flowers. This was a good prayer, "Lord give 
me learning enough that I may preach plain 
enough." 

There is a lesson here for parents. There 
is a springtime in every life. Parents, over- 
looking this, neglect the religious teaching of 
the child and then weep over the irreligious 



36 spiritual Farming 

conduct of the youth and the young man. 
They sow into the ears of prodigal and dis- 
sipated boys what ought to have been sown 
into the ears of babies, and then are discour- 
aged because their words are not more fruit- 
ful. The springtime of seed sowing is past 
and the soil is too hard and too much cum- 
bered with other things for mother's tender 
words to grow there. Spurgeon says: 
"Train trees when they are saplings, and 
young lads before the down is come on their 
chins. If you want a bulfinch to pipe, whistle 
to him while he is young; he will scarcely 
catch the tune after he has learned the wild 
bird's note. Begin early to teach, for children 
begin early to sin. Catch them young and you 
may hope to keep them. 

"Ere your boy has reached to seven, 
Teach him well the way to heaven ; 
Better still the work will thrive 
If he learns before he's five." 



''He that tilleth his land shall have plenty 
of bread." The Bible. 

"I will go root away the noisome weeds, 
that without profit suck the soil's fertility from 
wholesome flowers/' Shakespeare, 



spiritual Farming 39 



Part III. — Cultivating the Crop. 

The text states a familiar principle in agri- 
culture, namely, that the cultivation of the 
crop is essential to successful farming. The 
honorable knights of the plowhandle and of 
the hoehandle would all laugh at one who, 
when his crop was planted, put all the plows 
in the shed and all the hoes in the rack, turned 
the horses into the pastures, discharged his 
laborers, and took his seat on the porch to 
watch the corn grow. Very early was it said, 
"By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
bread." Six thousand years of experience 
together with the application of modern sci- 
ence to agriculture and horticulture have not 
altered this rule laid down for the guidance of 
our first parents as they walked out of Eden 
to plant their first field and sow their first 
garden. "He that tilleth his land shall have 
plenty of bread." He that tilleth it not shall 
have plenty of weeds^ plenty of grass, plenty 
of hunger. 

The principle is not confined to the field in 
which our corn and cotton grow and the gar- 



40 Spiritual Farming 

den in which our vegetables are raised but 
embraces our lives in which habits and virtues 
grow. If you are a parent, you are not al- 
lowing your children to grow up wild — that 
is not all parents are. You recognize the im- 
portance and responsibility of cultivating their 
minds, manners and morals. If their minds 
are neglected, they will grow rank with the 
weeds of error ; if their manners are neglected, 
they w411 become ugly with ill behavior; if 
their characters are neglected, they will be- 
come foul with immoral habits. Faithful and 
persevering culture of the child in mind, man- 
ners and morals is the parents' hope against 
that ignorance which is indigenous to the soil, 
against errors which many enemies seek to 
sow in the child's life, and that impurity which 
corrupts it. 

Is it not astonishing that, in the face of this 
universal principle and the many conspicuous 
demonstrations of it. Christian professors 
should expect to keep their natures pure and 
grow the plants of the kingdom and the fruits 
of righteousness while yet ignoring the means 
by which they are made to grow? Certainly 
there is no farmer but knows better and the 
farmer may become our teacher if we w^ish to 
know how to make a full harvest. 



spiritual Farming 41 

KEEP HOEING AND PRAYING. 

"Faith Without Works is Dead." 

Said Farmer Jones, in a whining tone, 

To his good old neighbor Gray: 
"I've worn my knees through to the bone; 

But it ain't no use to pray. 

"I've prayed to the Lord a thousand times 

For to make that 'ere corn grow; 
And why your'n beats it so and climbs, 

I'd give a deal to know." 

Said Farmer Gray to his neighbor Jones, 

In his easy, quiet way : 
"When prayers get mixed with lazy bones, 

They don't make farmin' pay. 

"Your weeds, I notice, are good an' tall, 

In spite of all your prayers. 
You may pray for corn till the heavens fall 

If you don't dig up the tares. 

"I mix my prayers with a little toil 

Along in every row, 
An' I work this mixture into the soil 

Quite vig'rous, with a hoe. 

"So, while I'm praying I use my hoe. 

An' do my level best 
To keep down the weeds along each row, 

An' the Lord He does the rest. 



42 spiritual Farming 

"It's well for to pray, both night and morn, 

As every farmer knows; 
But the place to pray for thrifty corn 

Is right between the rows. 

"You must use your hands while praying, though, 

If an answer you would get. 
For prayer-worn knees an' a rusty hoe 

Never raised a big crop yet. 

"An' so I believe, my good old friend. 

If you mean to win the day. 
From plowing clean to the harvest end 

You must hoe as well as pray." 

It is a well known fact that the majority of 
men who are eminent in Church, State afld 
Letters were reared in the country. Four out 
of every five of the presidents of the United 
States came from the farm and the proportion 
is not less for editors, authors and college pres- 
idents. It is not, we think, unlikely that this 
may be accounted for by the fact that the 
country boy became early acquainted with this 
elementary principle, that things grow by cuK 
tivation. He observed that as the cotton was 
plowed and the com hoed they grew, and pres- 
ently he grasped the relation of mind to cul- 
ture and betook himself to books and schools, 
helping to swell the number of country boys 



Spiritua Farming 43 

in our colleges and universities to eighty-five 
per cent of the entire enrollment in these in- 
stitutions. Carrying the analogy forward, he 
found that weeds of evil thought and habit 
were choking out the virtues of his moral na- 
ture and knew that he must give more atten- 
tion to the task of soul culture. So, as he 
had weeded out grass from the potato patch 
he now weeds out profanity, vulgarity and 
vice. There can be no doubt that the pitiful 
spectacle which the lives of many church-mem- 
bers present is due to neglect just here. How 
few luxurious lives among us ! Where is the 
life that is not marred by some sin or fault or 
foible which is allowed to grow in it. In 
how many are the Christian graces choked 
and dwarfed! The cultivation of the Chris- 
tian life is the greatest need in our churches 
to-day. Observe some of the 

SCRIPTURE FIGURES OF SPIRITUAL LIFE, 

which strengthen the claims of this work 
upon us. The germ of the immortal life is 
signified in language like this : "Born again, 
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible 
by the word of Grod which liveth and abideth 
forever." There the spiritual life begins. 



44 Spiritual Farming 

Its primordial form is a seed, and the language 
implies cultivation and growth. Starting 
from the idea of life as a seed the Scriptures 
abound in passages which enjoin its nurture 
and development. The figures are various, 
but the idea of nurture and growth is in them 
all. At one time believers are considered as 
that which is to be grown: 'They shall re- 
vive as the corn and grow as the vine." At 
another they are reckoned as a plantation and 
the Christian graces are the growing plants: 
"Ye are God's husbandry" — literally His field 
or farm. Some of the graces are named 
which God would grow in this field. Faith 
and love are among them. Writing to the 
Thessalonian Christians Paul says : ''Your 
faith groweth exceedingly and the charity 
(love) of every one of you toward each other 
aboundeth." And Peter, speaking to believ- 
ers at large, entreats that we "grov/ in grace 
and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior 
Jesus Christ." 

It is a sad deception if you persuade your- 
self that you have attained full spiritual stat- 
ure. That is an attainment never reached by 
any biblical saint. Paul voices the experience 
and the ideal of them all when he says, "Not 
as though I had already attained either were 



spiritual Farming 45 

already perfect; but I follow after ^ ^ ^ 
I press toward the mark for the prize of ^the 
high calling." But you need not lose heart if 
growth seems slow. Your religious experi- 
ence may be genuine, although it is not sat- 
isfactory. Your religious life and its graces 
may lack thriftiness because you have neg- 
lected their cultivation. If there is a grace 
you wish to grow, begin the nurture of the 
smallest root of it you find in yourself. Do 
not be discouraged if it does not spring full- 
grown at once. This would be the surest sign 
that it was not the right sort. Instantaneous 
sanctification, the sort which professes that 
all the graces reach perfection in one night's 
revival meeting, is neither so beautiful, so 
enduring, nor so fruitful as that of more 
gradual growth. It is usually a pale and sour 
variety. Fruit grown in the hot-house is 
never luscious. That which is grown in the 
field under the sun and shower and which rip- 
ens by the slow processes of cultivation and the 
seasons tastes sweeter and lasts longer. I 
like the sight and fragrance of hoary-headed 
piety which grows richer and mellower as 
it ripens for the harvest. Impromptu manu- 
facture always denotes inferior goods. The 
glass-blower can make sparkling gems in an 



46 Spiritual Farming 

instant, but it takes centuries for one of God's 
foundries to turn out a diamond. Nut-grass 
outgrows corn or cotton and grows without 
cultivation, the latter with it. 

THE CROP MUST BE CULTIVATED. 

We have no patent cultivators to advertise, 
no new compound which we guarantee to pro- 
duce a crop as by magic. We only point out 
some methods used by the old-fashioned farm- 
ers. 

The crop must be protected. The farmer 
either fences the animals in or fences them 
out. It will not do to let in upon his growing 
corn hordes of destroyers. If the hogs were 
allowed to root, the cows to bite, the horses 
to scamper and the chickens to scratch, he 
would not expect a crop. Even the little 
moles and mice are trapped and slain. And 
what a war he makes on the potato-bugs! 
Do you, now, let in troops of destroyers upon 
the tender plants of your spiritual life? 
Beastly appetites and animal passions, hungry 
lusts and prancing pleasures play havoc with 
the young graces of many lives. Penitent 
vows, holy resolves and spiritual aspirations 
have been bruised and bitten to death by them. 



spiritual Farming 47 

How much safer to put up the bars, mend the 
fence, and raise it high against these worldly 
destroyers ! 

Growing crops need frequent watering. 
There is now before Congress what is called 
the "Irrigation Bill," which proposes to pro- 
vide water by irrigation and at the govern- 
ment's expense for a large area of our West- 
ern country. The land without it is arid and 
useless but is capable, as has been learned by 
experiments, of great fertility. There are 
many arid and useless lives needing to be re- 
freshed. They are famishing by the cravings 
of natural thirst and are parched by spiritual 
drought; the graces are stunted for want of 
a spiritual irrigation promised by Him who 
opened up a fountain in the house of David. 
*'The water that I shall give him shall be in 
him a well of water springing up into everlast- 
ing life.'' "He that believeth on me as the Scrip- 
ture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers 
of living water." The appointments of the 
Sabbath and public worship are for the re- 
freshing of our spiritual lives. The neglect 
of these has consigned many a soul to barren 
dryness. The old saints had a beautiful 
prayer for "the droppings of the sanctuary." 
In their accustomed places of worship their 



.48 Spiritual Farming 

souls were refreshed. There God came "down 
like rain on the mown grass as showers that 
water the earth." 

Drainage is important in religious agricul- 
ture as in natural farming. Year after year 
the planter goes on ditching and tiling his 
land and running off the w^ater, though he 
knows a dry field means a dead crop. The 
fool in his haste says this is folly, but the wise 
farmer knows the dangers to corn and cotton 
from drowning as well as from drought. He 
knows the worthlessness of land that is sodden 
from standing water and so opens drains and 
ditches and unreluctantly lets the water, flow. 

There is no more important lesson for the 
spiritual farmer to learn than this. If we 
make basins of our lives and try to catch and 
hold all the showers of blessing that fall, we 
cheat ourselves as well as others. Receivers 
must be disbursers. God deals with us on 
this principle: "You give and I will give: 
you forgive and I will forgive; you bless and 
I will bless." We must keep open the chan- 
nels through which may flow abroad the cur- 
rents of sympathy, love and benevolence, and 
in time of our most parched need these shall 
return to bless us. The fields give to the 
drains, the drains to the ditches, the ditches to 



spiritual Farming 49 

the rivers and the rivers to the ocean, and, 
after being spread over thousands of leagues, 
the waters are vaporized and elevated by the 
sun, held in the clouds, blown by the winds, 
and dropped in showers upon fields just when 
every plant is fainting with thirst. That 
which would have killed if it had been hoarded 
makes alive after it has been generously dis- 
tributed. 

Make channels for the streams of k^ve, 

Where they may broadly run; 
And love has overflowing streams 

To fill them every one. 

But, if at any time we cease 

Such channels to provide, 
The very founts of love for us 

Will soon be parched and dried. 

For we must share, if we would keep 

That blessing from above. 
Ceasing to give, we cease to have, 

Such is the law of love. 

An important part of a farmer's crop is 
what he calls ^'weeding'' it. This is the task 
of the hoe-man. Morning and noon go forth 
these warriors of the hoehandle to make battle 
against the invading army of green-coats. 
Ahead of the plows and behind the plows, 
chopping, pulling, slaying. ''How the weeds 
do grow!'' They hide themselves behind 
and under the potato vines and root and for- 
tify themselves beside the cotton until it re- 

4 



50 Spiritual Farming 

quires skillful tactics to exterminate the one 
without destroying the other. So rapidly do 
they gain reinforcement and so pertinaciously 
do they keep up their attack that the war must 
be waged all summer long or the harvest will 
be short. 

Ah, the weeds that infest our moral plan- 
tations! The tall weeds of worldliness shad- 
ing the delicate plants of spirituality and 
grace; the vines of selfishness which choke 
the life so tightly that all growth and benevo- 
lence is arrested ; the nettles of impatience and 
anger which spoil meekness and gentleness. 
The weeds that are not plucked up while 
young will seed, and multiply, and propagate. 
One evil habit allowed to grow often fills the 
life with sin and sorrow. The prayer of the 
little Quaker boy is a good one for us all. 
Standing up in meeting and folding his arms 
over his breast, the little six-year-old said in 
a clear sweet voice, but loud enough for all 
to hear; "I do wish the Lord would make us 
all gooder, and gooder, and gooder, till there 
is no bad left." 

The farmer is repeatedly stirring the soil. 
When the crop begins to grow plows, harrows 
and cultivators are brought forth and the 
plowmen are told to drive. The land must 



spiritual Farming 51 

not be allowed to bake, the roots of plants must 
have room to grow and fresh earth must be 
turned to cotton and corn. The moral soil 
of our natures needs this frequent breaking up 
that they may not become hard and that the 
roots of moral virtues, religious principles and 
Christian graces may set themselves deep and 
strong. For this reason we should not shrink 
from reading such scriptures as the sixth chap- 
ter of Matthew, or the thirteen of First Corin- 
thians, or the Third of James, nor from hear- 
ing plain and pointed sermons. The deep 
plowing of early spring should be followed by 
the close plowing of summer. That preach- 
ing which never disturbs us will never do us 
good. 

Some crops need pruning. This is a 
yearly need of the orchard and the vineyard. 
Sometimes the corn overshoots and these 
shoots must be pulled off or the crop will 
be shortened. This sort of work is often nec- 
essary to Christian lives. Sometimes the best 
and most luxurious lives produce excrescences. 
The soil was well prepared, good seed were 
sown, the early stages of growth were truly 
beautiful and promising ; for a while the most 
exquisitely modest graces appear; but as the 
young convert grows and is put forward in 



52 spiritual Farming 

religious work, and just as admiring friends 
are looking for the best fruit to appear, they 
are saddened by disappointment. Out of 
Christian zeal has grown the false shoot of 
church jealousy; spiritual fervor puts forth 
the shoot of spiritual pride; out of Christian 
conviction has grown religious bigotry; from 
loyalty and devotion to the church has sprung 
up stubbornness and a temper to rule or ruin^ 
lead or lock all progress — the timid and de- 
vout young man has become Brother Diotre- 
phes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence, 
and now stands supreme censor for the church 
of God. The shoot is larger than the stalk 
and has rendered it barren. Wise spiritual 
farming will sacrifice these false growths 
which sap the life of the individual and of the 
church. There are times when pruning is as 
necessary as planting and plowing. 

GOD GIVETH THE INCREASE. 

Fencing, weeding and plowing — all that we 
can do — will be wasted labor if the crop re- 
ceives no other help. How little, after all, is 
our part! ''God giveth the increase.'' Sap 
and soil, shower and sunshine count for more 
than the plow and the hoe. We can keep down 



i spiritual Farming 53 

the weeds but we cannot bring up the cotton 
and the corn. We cannot add one inch to the 
stature of one stalk in all the field. That is 
the work of God. The most skillful artist can 
at best but make a picture of a flower ; he may 
paint what he calls a rose, but it lacks the inner 
life and exhales no sweetness. Life is more 
than a product of man's device. God is its 
author. 

But the fact that most and best of the work 
must be done by God is nowhere in Scripture 
made a ground of excuse for man's idleness; 
it is rather made an incentive to activity, a 
cause for industry, and a ground for encour- 
agement and hope. Three interpreters handle 
the familiar text, ''Work out your own salva- 
tion with fear and trembling; for it is God 
which worketh in you." One of these inter- 
preters takes the first clause and says, "The 
work is mine;" he relies on his moral main- 
strength. Another takes the last clause as his 
motto and says, "The work is God's;" and 
waits for God to do everything. A third and 
wiser interpreter takes the whole text and 
says: "I will work because God works with 
me." To Christ's "Without me you can do 
nothing," he replies with Paul's "I can do all 
things through Christ which strengtheneth 



54 Spiritual Farming 

me/' and with hopeful diligence carries for- 
ward his spiritual cultivation even as the farm- 
er plows and hoes because God has sent the 
spring showers and the summer sun and na- 
ture becomes his co-laborer in making the 
crop. 



REAPING 
THE HARVEST 




*'I have chosen you, and ordained you, that 
we should go and bring forth fruit." Jesus. 

"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he 
also reap." Paul. 

"The good seed are the children of the 
kingdom ; but the tares are the children of the 
wicked ones; the harvest is the end of the 
world, and the reapers are the angels." Jesus. 

"As to growth in seed and shrub, like pro- 
duces like. He who sows wheat reaps wheat, 
not tares. He who plants a grape receives a 
purple cluster, not a bunch of thorns or this- 
tles. He who sows honor shall reap confi- 
dence. ^ ^ ^ ^ Having sown self-sacri- 
fice and love, he shall reap fame and adulation. 
For nature's law^s are universal and inexorable 
— like produces like. The sheaf is simply the 
seed enlarged and multiplied. The sowing 
contains the germs of all the harvests to be 
reaped." Hillis. 



spiritual Farming 57 



Part IV. — Reaping the Harvest. 

The three Scriptures which we have quoted 
deal with Hfe's fruitage and its harvests. 
They stand for the three great facts related to 
that harvest, namely, the harvest we grow, 
the harvest we reap, and that harvest of which 
we shall be the sheaves to be reaped; or, to 
put it in another form, the harvest the world 
reaps from our sowing, the harvest we reap 
from it, and the harvest which the angels reap. 
Of what tremendous concern are each of these 
to us all! Combined they mark the end and 
aim of all our planting, all our cultivating and 
the object of all the heavenly fertilities. 
First, then, think of 



the harvest we grow for others. 

The truth we have learned, the repentance 
we have experienced and exercised, the culture 



58 Spiritual Farming 

we have received become evidently justified 
and effectual only when we have brought forth 
fruit. ^'I have chosen you and ordained you 
that ye should go and bring forth fruit." That 
is the end of our election and ordination, that 
our redeemed lives should bring forth a harvest 
of good for the needy and hungry world. To 
fail of this is to come short of the very end of 
our being and the purpose of our redemption. 
That picture of the withered figtree in the 
twenty-first chapter of Matthew is a sermon 
in silent symbol. "And when he saw a fig-tree 
in the way he came to it and found nothing 
thereon but leaves only." So far as human 
eye could see, it was, I should think, a perfect 
and a promising tree. But he found nothing 
thereon hut leaves only. How proudly it rus- 
tled its leaves, symbols of an empty and vain 
profession. We say that Jesus cursed the tree, 
but did He? He sought fruit and went away 
disappointed, saying only as He went, ''Let no 
fruit grow on thee henceforward forever." 
Now the fruitless tree is disappointed and 
blushes, and withers, and dies, conscious that 
the highest end of tree-life is forever impossi- 
ble to it. It had borne nothing but leaves ; Je- 
sus did not forbid it to continue bearing them. 
It had borne no fruit ; now it shall not bear any. 



spiritual Farming 59 

He simply shut it up hereafter to the Hfe which 
it had lived hitherto. The narrative does not 
say that He cursed it. He did no deed of vio- 
lence, but only calmly sealed its fruitfulness 
and went His way never to give it another op- 
portunity to feed Him in His hunger. It did 
not die because Jesus killed it, but it died be- 
cause it would rather die than live always as it 
had been living and because its opportunity foi 
any higher life had passed forever. Though 
we may not have hitherto lived for them, to 
have the noblest ends of life made forever im- 
possible to us withers the soul. It is damned 
of its own remorse. Ah, the despair there is 
in the words, "Let him that is unholy be un- 
holy still !'' To be shut up forever to the life 
we have preferred for a season ! 

Two ideals are everywhere set up and ev- 
erywhere enforced in the New Testament — 
growth and fruitfulness. They represent be- 
ing — what the Christian is in himself and what 
he is becoming ; and doing, the meaning of his 
life for others. Growth, not maturity, is the 
highest achievement in character possible to a 
Christian, and fruitfulness is the highest ex- 
pression of that life. The ripest saint to whom 
the inspired Word is addressed is still admon- 
ished to grow. The growing life is superior 



6o Spirihud Farmmg 

to the full grown life both in respect to itedf 
and its benefits to others. Fruit is borne in 
the process of the tree's growth, never in its 
maturity. And fruit-bearing is the highest 
end toward which a tree or a man grows. The 
fruit of scwne lives is of rarer flavor than that 
of others, and one \ields fifty and another an 
hundred fold, but the best thing any man ever 
does is to supply out of his own Uf e nourish- 
ment and strength for other lives. And this is 
alwa3^s d(Hie without loss to himself; for the 
fruit of a tree, while the best part of it, is 
something which it does not need for itsdf. 
Then, follow these ideals of growth and fruit- 
fulness with unwavering eye and unfaltering 
step. They will lead you to the highest use- 
fulness and nobleness attainable by man. "And 
this I pray, that your love may abound yet 
more and more in knowledge and in all judg- 
ment ; that ye may approve things that are ex- 
cellent; that ye may be sincere and without 
offense till the day of Christ; being filled with 
the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus 
Christ; unto the glory and praise of God/' 
'*He that ministers seed to the sower, both 
minister bread for your food, and multiply 
your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your 
riglUeousness/' 



spiritual Farming 6i 

THE HARVEST WE SHALL REAP. 

There are fruits of our lives of which we 
ourselves shall eat. Our sowing and cultivat- 
ing make supplies for us as well as for others. 
"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap." Each word and act is a seed and each 
seed shall produce after its kind, whether it 
be good or whether it be bad, and each will 
multiply itself many fold. A seed is something 
different from a gem. A diamond is all it 
will ever be, but not so is the seed ; its bosom 
aches with a harvest. The harvest will be 
more than the seed-corn. There will be 
enough to satiate us and to supply many others 
beside. There will be a harvest which our 
neighbors and our children shall reap, but one 
also which shall be our own. A thousand shall 
mourn and a thousand curse whose lives have 
been imbittered and vexed by the evil fruits 
of parental sins. Many others will have the 
way which leads to the moral heights made 
hard for them by men and women whom they 
will never see until they stand before the judg- 
ment throne. 

This harvest which comes to us as our part 
is a matter for us to consider. This solemn 
truth is something apart both from the influ- 



62 spiritual Farming 

ence of our lives upon others and of God's fu- 
ture judgment on our sins. With the first of 
these facts we have already dealt, and with the 
second we will deal presently. That with 
which we are now dealing is that which the 
text illuminates, that the man who sows shall 
from the very field he has sown reap the nat- 
ural product of his deeds. Says Henry Drum- 
mond: ''If it makes no impression on a man 
to know that God will visit his iniquities upon 
him, he cannot blind himself to the fact that 
Nature will. Do we not all know what it is to 
be punished by Nature for disobeying her? 
We have looked round the wards of a hospital, 
a prison or a madhouse and seen there Na- 
ture at work squaring her accounts with sin. 
And we knew as we looked that if no Judge 
sat on the throne of heaven at all, there was a 
Judgment there where an inexorable Nature 
was crying aloud for justice and carrying out 
her heavy sentences of violated laws.'' God 
has put these sentences in the hands of nature 
to be executed upon us here lest we should 
forget that there is a judgment at all and lose 
ourselves in sinful gratification. "We are al- 
ways practicing," says Drummond again, 
''these little deceptions upon ourselves, post- 
poning the consequences of our misdeeds as 



Spirituai Farming 63 

if they were to culminate some other day about 
the time of death. It makes us sin with a 
lighter hand to run an account with retribu- 
tion, as it were, and delay the reckoning time 
with God. But every day is a reckoning day. 
Every soul is a Book of Judgment and Nature 
as a recording angel marks there every sin. 
As all will be judged by the great Judge some 
day, all are judged by Nature now. The sin 
of yesterday, as a part of its penalty, has the 
sin of to-day. All follow us in silent retribu- 
tion on our past, and go with us to the grave.'' 
And yet the fearful retributions for sin which 
men experience and see, as terrible as they are, 
are only premonitory. They are but symptoms 
of wrath, the twitching bodily pains which in- 
dicate the fatality of the disease and foretoken 
death. 

There are some observations to be made 
just here. First, each one has a choice of 
seed he is to sow and in that way may select 
the harvest he prefers to reap. Arnot discerns 
the true character of life. He says: 'Tt is 
not a question at all whether I shall sow or not 
to-day ; the only question to be decided is, shall 
I sow good seed or bad? Every man always 
is sowing for his own harvest in eternity either 
tares or wheat. According as a man soweth 



64 Spiritual Farming 

SO shall he also reap ; he that sows to the wind 
of vanity shall reap the whirlwind of wrath/' 
And whether we sow good seed or bad — 
whether we sin or serve God — the harvest is 
equally certain. Carlyle may have lacked apos- 
tolic faith, but he did not lack confidence in the 
law of moral fruitage in the world. He quotes, 
"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap,'' etc., and adds: "No blight, nor mil- 
dew, nor scorching sun, nor rain-deluge can 
turn that harvest into failure. Cast forth thy 
acts, thy words, into the ever-living, ever- 
working universe; it is a seed-grain that can- 
not die ; unnoticed to-day it will be found flour- 
ishing as a Banyan grows (perhaps, alas, a 
Hemlock forest) after a thousand years." 

THE HARVEST WHICH THE ANGELS SHALL REAP. 

The good seed are the children of the king- 
dom; but the tares are the children of the 
wicked one ;**>?= the harvest is the end 
of the world ; and the reapers are the angels." 
That is future judgment and reward. The 
tares shall be gathered to be burned and the 
righteous shall be gathered to "shine forth 
as the sun in the kingdom of their father." 
Here is the mystery, the astonishment and the 



spiritual Farming f^5 

awful solemnity of future judgment. In this 
life men sow words and deeds and cultivate 
their crop looking for the harvest, and even 
gather some of its first fruits. But when they 
have come to the end of the season, lo, they 
themselves are the harvest to be reaped ! This 
Scripture marks the fact that our moral acts, 
thoughts, and purposes so root themselves into 
our characters that they become a part of us. 
The two have taken on a common existence, 
an inseparable oneness, an indistinguishable 
identity. Such is the nature of good and evil 
that they have no independent life and cannot 
exist apart from individual men and women. 
Who can conceive of sin without a sinner, or 
of abstract goodness? These qualities have 
reality only when they are wedded to person- 
ality and to that wedlock no human power can 
grant a divorce. Hence the reaping of good 
and evil is the reaping of men and women. 
Each individual shall be a stalk of many 
branches on which all he has produced of in- 
iquity or righteousness shall ripen for that aw- 
ful or glorious harvest. Every iniquity will 
be found clinging to some soul. Yes, it will 
be a part of some soul. Likewise all the fruits 
of good will be hanging from the boughs of the 
life which bore them. As the stalk is reaped 



66 Spiritual Farming 

with the wheat it has borne, so shall the saint 
and the sinner be. John Milton recognized 
this truth when he said : "A good man is the 
ripe fruit our earth holds up to God." 

"The harvest is the end of the world." The 
season will not cut the crop prematurely short. 
Every seed will be given time to burst into 
life, every plant will be given time to grow, 
to leaf, flower and fruit and the harvest to 
ripen before it is gathered. Every evil word 
and deed we have sown, every evil habit we 
have cultivated shall have time to do its ut- 
most in fixing itself in our characters and in 
bringing forth its fullest crop. Every law of 
germination, growth, multiplication and prop- 
agation shall be busy with the seed we have 
sown when we are sleeping in the dust and 
can raise no hand to shorten the awful in- 
crease. When the grain is ready to be gath- 
ered the root which has borne it all will be 
found in our grave as the oak stands in the 
heart of the acorn and is fertilized by it. A 
few years ago we were on Roanoke island near 
the spot where Walter Raleigh planted his col- 
ony. We were told that there was still on the 
island the original stock of the scuppemong, 
or white grape, so abundant to-day through- 
out half of the Southern States. Successive 



spiritual Farming 67 

transplantings and transportations have multi- 
plied one little vine into thousands and a vint- 
age every year which no hand can measure. 
The lives of men bear a likeness to that vine, 
every life is a stock from which is shooting 
sprouts of good or evil to multiply the harvest. 
Who first taught another to swear ? Who dis- 
tilled the first sparkling glass? Who set the 
copy of this sin and that after which the world 
has been so assiduously writing these thousand 
years? Who furnished the seed for all the 
baneful sins now filling the world with evil and 
sorrow? What shall his harvest be? Dean 
Farrar has told us that "In Australia there are 
leagues and leagues covered and rendered use- 
less by stubborn, gigantic, impenetrable thistles, 
and it is well known that all sprang from one 
single thistle brought over by a Scotchman 
and planted in his garden.'' Another tells us 
that "Mr. Jones of Wayne County, New York, 
the celebrated originator and propagator of 
wheat, put in a single grain of his best brand 
of wheat and after it had sprouted took it up 
and divided the roots; in about three weeks' 
time he took them up and divided again, 
and so on just as long as they could bear it. 
And when at the end of the season he reaped 
his crop, lo, that one grain of wheat had pro- 



68 Spiritual Farming 

duced twenty-two pounds of grain ! Find out 
how many grains in a pound and multiply it 
by twenty-two and you will have the power 
of increase in a single kernel for one brief sea- 
son. Now plant that twenty-two pounds next 
year and so on through all the years of a nat- 
ural life and try to estimate what the harvest 
would be/' Men's sins and the evil influences 
of their lives multiply in their evil progeny like 
the Scotchman's thistle. It is an encouraging 
fact that God makes our good deeds and good 
lives to multiply unto a blessed harvest like 
that of the wheat. 

''The harvest is the end of the world.'' This 
suggests that opportunity is given every one 
for repentance and reformation. Judgment is 
not executed speedily. But it also suggests 
the unalterableness of our State if we postpone 
a change until the harvest time is come. God 
gives us time to repent if we will, to sow good 
seed if we prefer, but when once the crop is 
matured it cannot be improved, modified or 
changed and the ''end of the world" will leave 
no time to sow another. The dolorous cry 
will then be "The harvest is past, the summer 
is ended, and w^e are not saved." 

"The reapers are the angels." "The Son 
of Man shall send forth His angels." In that 



spiritual Farming 69> 

autumn of the soul a voice shall be heard say- 
ing, "Thrust in thy sickle and reap; for the 
time is come to reap; for the harvest of the 
world is ripe/' Good seed have done their 
best and bad seed their worst ; saints are sanc- 
tified and sinners hardened. All the stalks of 
the field bend under their load of ripened grain. 
The divine husbandman has waited patiently 
for the early and latter rain. Longer waiting 
will not improve the crop nor add one grain 
to the harvest. Further probation for the 
sinner is useless; cut him down. The multi- 
tudes of the heavenly hosts shall bear the 
sickle. There will be no cry of the "harvest 
is great and the laborers are few." The in- 
numerable company of the white harvesters 
will come forth in obedience to the command 
of the Son of God. They are many and quali- 
fied for their tasks. With moral vision un- 
blurred by sin, they will discern between the 
good and bad ; obedient, swift and strong, they 
will thrust in the blade and will not stay until 
all the harvest is in. They will reap for the 
heavenly garner and the unquenchable fire. 
That which no mother, or father, or friend, 
or minister could be trusted to do for biased 
love and pity these servants, who know no law 
but the will of God, will do at Jesus' behest. 



70 Spiritual Farming 

Friend, ponder the question of the sort of 
seed you are sowing, the habits which you are 
cultivating, and the harvest for which you have 
a right to look. 



APR 25 1904 



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